Weird Science, wasted wallaby edition

No, it's not the next Ubuntu release—wasted wallabies get high and cause crop …

Stoned wallabies blamed for crop circles: That's one introduction that really doesn't need any embellishment. I've been aware of birds getting drunk from eating partly fermented berries (with sometimes tragicresults), but I'd not come across stories of animals that had moved past recreational drugs and onto the hard stuff. According to news reports, wallabies have discovered poppies, grown Down Under for medicinal purposes, and happily munch them to the point of intoxication. I'm a bit skeptical of the suggestion that their subsequent aimless wanderings create a circle in nearby crops, but I would love to see someone turn this anecdote into science by determining whether the animals deliberately seek out the poppies, or if the wallabies are just getting an incidental high.

You seem familiar—can I give you money?: The Journal of Consumer Research provides us with this fine bit of jargon: "The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context." The focus of the paper isn't actually on physical similarity, but trivial things such as a shared birthdate. These shared items apparently increase the probability that a consumer will purchase from the salesperson. Apparently, the effect is mediated in part by the expectation that having something shared will provide the consumer with a solid basis for a long-term service relationship. Still, it makes me wonder which similarities will work, and which won't. Shared piercings, maybe?

Maybe it's better not to have some details: Here's a disturbing one. Contrast agents are commonly used to highlight different tissues during medical imaging, which should lead to a better noninvasive diagnosis. Unfortunately, it looks like at least one of those agents can cause more problems than it solves. Although a number of contrast agents have been shown to cause temporary damage to the kidneys, the harmful effects appear to linger. After adjusting for the general state of health in a group of patients, researchers have found that those who received an agent called iodixanol had double the rate of adverse incidents, including death, stroke, heart attack, etc., as their peers.

Fast animals could pop a wheelie: Chances are good that you've seen someone on a motorcycle or bicycle pop a wheelie, in which a quick burst of acceleration, combined with a bit of lift on the front tire, allows the rider to ride along with the front wheel off the ground. I've also personally experienced the wheelie's converse, where a rapid deceleration lifts the back tire off the ground. It turns out that fast animals run into these problems, too. Researchers followed the biomechanics of polo horses and racing greyhounds during competitions, and found that, at low speeds, the primary limit to their acceleration and deceleration is simply keeping all four legs in contact with the ground.

Clubbing in the name of science: Another Weird Science point awarded for a jargon-filled title here: "Side biases in humans (Homo sapiens): three ecological studies on hemispheric asymmetries." The ecological studies? They involved going into a club and working with people in their (semi) natural habitat. Hemispheric asymmetries? The ones in question are the left and right sides of someone's head. The researchers tried to bum cigarettes off clubgoers partially deafened by the music and found that requests made to the right ear were more likely to be met with success than those directed to the left ear. I'm sure there's a way for public health authorities to use this information, but I'm not quite sure what it is yet.

Bend it like a mitochondrion: Anyone who has gone through a basic biology course has undoubtedly seen a cutaway view of mitochondria, with their elaborately convoluted internal structure. Those folds don't simply occur naturally, though, and researchers have now found a protein that helps the membrane to curve. This isn't much of a surprise, as a number of proteins that can curve membranes have already been identified, but the whole process still stands out as strange. Remember that a membrane has the consistency of a soap bubble immersed in warm water, so the thought that a protein could physically impart a structure onto something that ethereal always amazes me.

As if the beatings weren't bad enough: The world is filled with spurious correlations, but that doesn't mean that observing a correlation isn't valuable—they're often the first evidence that sets scientists down a fruitful path of research. Now, researchers have noticed a very strange one that will almost certainly warrant a follow-up: those who suffer childhood abuse have a 49 percent higher rate of cancer diagnoses than their peers. The study was limited to Canadians, so the basic correlation needs to be confirmed in other countries, but the substantial population size (over 13,000 individuals) suggests something may be afoot.